


The Bitter Past

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scotland Yard wasn't the first time they had met, but Sherlock didn't remember. Of course he didn't; it had all meant nothing to him. But Sally remembered, and she wasn't about to forgive him. Not now. Not ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bitter Past

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Doctor_WTF](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doctor_WTF/gifts).



> I got a prompt to explain Sherlock and Sally's first meeting. Just a warning: there's mention of drug abuse and self harm in this fic.

He didn't remember her. It didn't surprise her because he had always been a git ever since they were young. When she saw him the first time he consulted on one of her cases she couldn't have been more shocked. Sherlock Holmes hadn't killed himself with the drugs he used and he was making his way as a consulting detective. It figured he would be a thorn in her side, even as an adult. She couldn't shake him. If he had remembered what had happened, had remembered the cruel and callous words he had said to her when they were young, she doubted he would have cared. She was beneath him, always had been. He held himself up so loftily and everyone else was trash. Everyone else was beneath his notice, unless he wanted to make himself feel better. He wasn't a bully, not as bad as the other boys, but for someone else that was ostracized by their peers she had hoped to get an ally. Instead she got another enemy.

She had always had a difficult home life. She was intelligent, one of the brightest in her neighborhood. Not with any help from her parents, because they were more interested in their drinks and their fights to pay much mind to her or her brother. But her brother wanted better for the both of them. He was a good ten years older than her, and when he was old enough he told his parents he was taking her and that was that. And so they left and he skipped university to work two jobs to support them. He had hoped he got her out without too much damage being done, but he hadn't. She was damaged.

She kept it well hidden, most of the time. She made her brother think everything was okay, everything was fine. And most days he believed her while inside she was a mess, an absolute bloody mess. When she got accepted to the school he'd always hoped he could attend, the school for some of the brightest students in London, she had been happy but also very very scared. She was worried the pressure would make her crack, that everyone would see just how broken she really was.

The bullying started almost immediately. She was picked on for her frizzy hair, for her secondhand uniform, for her scuffed up shoes. Try as she might, she couldn't fit in. She had no friends there, not even a single ally. The children were cruel and the adults didn't care. It was hell, pure hell, and all she wanted to do was escape since she obviously would never be accepted. It was in her second year that she met Sherlock Holmes. He bore the brunt of the teasing that she didn't get. The two of them were singled out, but where she would try and sneak by without notice Sherlock would cause a ruckus, punch them down. He didn't fit in, but at least he wasn't a coward about it.

She made overtures of friendship but he rebuffed her. It hurt that someone who should know exactly how she felt, knew the sting of cruel words and the pain of physical attacks, would leave her to deal with it on her own. So she turned to pills, buying them from the less reputable people in school. She needed something to calm her nerves, and then when she got too calm she needed something to pick her up, make her alert. No one said a word because her grades held and the students who were selling didn't want to lose such a great customer.

She knew her brother worried. He wanted the best for her, but the best was out of reach. They had to settle for making do with what they could afford, and she resented it as much as she appreciated it. The conflict in her head of wanting more but knowing what she had was far better than what she could have had made her angry and irritated, made her crave the way the pills would stop the whirring thoughts in her head. She wanted to forget, she wanted to numb the day. And when that wasn't enough she began to do self harm. She knew it wasn't good, in the long run, but in the short term the act of cutting herself and bleeding brought her a sense of calm that even the pills couldn't.

It had gone on a little over a year when he betrayed her. Or rather when he exposed her. Sherlock had gotten into another fight and the threat of expulsion was imminent. He started naming names of all the people in the school who deserved to be in more trouble than he was. He named the people who sold her the pills, and when they got pulled in to see the headmaster they spilled names to save their own hides. Her brother was called and he had never seen him look so disappointed, as though he had failed her so very much. That hurt her more than anything else. He didn't yell, didn't ransack her room looking for the pills, didn't threaten her. He just asked her if she wanted help. And at that point, she really did. So even though they really couldn't afford it, he sent her to rehab. She spent two months there, sorting out her addiction and working on her life. It was a good thing, in the end, but her relationship with her brother was rocky for some time afterwards.

She didn't go back to the old school. She went somewhere else, somewhere where she could get a fresh start. And she resolved to turn her life around, to make her brother proud. He'd always wanted to go to university but he gave it up to save her from a horrible fate. If he couldn't go then she'd go instead, and she'd be the top of her class, and she'd show him that he had done the right thing all those years ago, no matter how bad things had been for a time. And he was proud, prouder of her than he had ever been before when she graduated university. When she told him she wanted to join Scotland Yard she got his complete support, and slowly she made her way up the ladder, proving a woman could be just as good as any man.

And then, of course, he had to come back. He had to make her life hell all over again. But this time, she was stronger. She wasn't a battered preteen who was looking to escape. She was a confident woman, secure in her knowledge that she was worthy, that she was intelligent, that she could hold her own in a crowd and be someone's better. She wouldn't let him tear her down again, wouldn't let him ruin what she had worked so hard to build. She was better than him, and as long as she kept that at the forefront of her mind she was content to endure him. Because she could outlast him, of this she was sure. She had to.


End file.
